PITTSBURGH — The St. Louis Blues didn't clinch a playoff spot by accident. Their leading the Presidents' Trophy race isn't a fluke. They're here in no small part because they've managed to go 71 games without losing three in a row.

That streak stayed alive Sunday with a 1-0 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. Based on the Pens' previous game, a power-play fueled 4-3 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday, and the fact that Pittsburgh spent 8:22 with the man advantage against St. Louis, a one-goal game wasn't particularly likely — but there it was.

"We were a little desperate," captain David Backes, the game's only goal-scorer, said afterward. "If we don't assert ourselves on the penalty kill, play well, do all the little things and win those battles, then with the power play they have and the chances (they got), potentially it could get pretty ugly. I think that kind of scares you into playing the right way."

St. Louis made it happen behind solid play from Brian Elliott, who made 10 of his 33 saves on the penalty kill. Five of those came at the start of the second period, when Pittsburgh played 1:38 with a two-man advantage.

Generally, the shots Elliott faced were from the outside, and the puck either bounced the Blues' way in front, or the Penguins failed to capitalize. In third-period power plays, Chris Kunitz and Lee Stempniak missed on rebound attempts. There weren't many beyond that.

"That's what they're gonna give you — they're going to take away the middle and force you to shoot from outside the dots, and then they're hard at the net," Penguins defenseman Matt Niskanen said. "It's hard to get a free rebound goal because their 'D' are pretty good at boxing out and clearing out rebounds."

The Blues also "threw our breakout out of whack a little bit," Niskanen said, preventing them from carrying the puck into the offensive zone as much as they'd like.

"We had to ad-lib a few times and kind of pass the puck into the zone," he said.

Ironically, the Penguins are an elite team because their power play is the league's best at 24.1 percent. They're not a great puck-possession team, controlling 50.3 percent of all unblocked shot attempts at 5-on-5 (15th in the league). From that, they generate 54.9 percent of all even-strength goals in their games, which is eighth overall.

Though Pittsburgh had more overall even-strength attempts on Sunday, 46-44, factoring in blocks gives St. Louis a 34-25 edge. The Blues added three more with the man advantage, but their success on Sunday was just as much about the shots they didn't touch. Allowing attempts isn't a great idea, generally speaking, but the Blues used the method effectively.

And the Penguins, meanwhile, showed what can happen if an opponent shuts down their power play; relying on their even-strength game, effective as it can be, is a dice roll because they don't have the puck all that often.

"Shooting against that team, both 5-on-5 and on the power play, you're shooting by two guys, three guys trying to get the puck to the net," Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said.

"Sometimes in the game, we were off the side of the net looking for diagonals, looking for passes so that we could get by their forward and their defense that were fronting pucks. We ended up with 33 shots, but at times, we needed to get more pucks on the net."

Blues coach Ken Hitchcock saw the same.

"Between the goalie and the PK, I thought we got in lanes and made them play a little bit more static than they probably wanted to today," Hitchcock said, echoing Backes by saying that the "fear factor" that comes with playing a dangerous team played into the Blues' favor.

And hey, if you can call two losses a streak, the streak is over.

"You get 20 guys that are engaged and going out there doing the right things all over the ice," Backes said. "The result is two points, and you stop that streak before it becomes something too many people are talking about."